Japanese Auteur Animation at RICA Wissembourg, Part 3: Tadanari Okamoto

Second Screening / Programme 2e partie                   25 Nov- 2014, La Nef, Wissembourg

The 1970s to the Present / Des années 1970 à nos jours

A Great Unrecognized Figure: Tadanari Okamoto

Une grande figure méconnue : OKAMOTO Tadanari

Ten Little Indians /十人の小さなインデイアン (1968)

December Song / 12月のうた (1971)

Chikotan / チコタン ぼくのおよめさん (1971)

The Monkey and the Crab (excerpt) /日本むかしばなしさるかに (1972)

The Soba Flower of Mt. Oni (excerpt) /鬼がくれ山のソバの花  (1979)

Making of: "Are wa dare" (1985)

The Magic Ballad / おこんじょうるり(1983)

Order: Tadanari Okamoto Zensakuhin Shu DVD Box

Ilan Nguyen’s second programme of Japanese Auteur Animation opened with the animation of Tadanari Okamoto (岡本 忠成, 1932 – 1990), an animation genius whose work has been little recognised overseas.  As Okamoto made educational films aimed at Japanese children and adaptations of Japanese folk tales and legends, many of which are challenging to translate, Nguyen speculated that this may have been the reason his films were not distributed overseas.  In Japan, Okamoto is recognised as one of their top animators, having won the prestigious Noburo Ofuji Award for innovation in animation more times than any other animator.   

Nguyen presented an overview of Okamoto’s career, beginning with his decision to return to university (an unusual thing to do in Japan, even today) to study filmmaking after seeing Czech puppet animation.  After completing his studies at Nihon University, Okamoto was mentored by Tadahito Mochinaga at MOM Productions where he worked on the Rankin/Bass productions The New Adventures of Pinocchio (ピノキオの冒険, 1960-1) and Willy McBean and his Magic Machine (1965).  He then set up his own studio Echo Productions in 1964 where he was to make nearly 40 films before his untimely death at the age of 58.  Nguyen spoke about the dedicated team of people who Okamoto employed at Echo Production who worked well together and contributed to the excellence of his films.  This team included puppet artisan Sumiko Hosaka (保坂純子, b. 1930), puppet maker / animator Fumiko Magari (真賀里文子), who both teach at the Laputa Art Animation School, and cinematographer Minoru Tamura (田村実).

Order: Tadanari Okamoto Sakuhin Shu Vol.1

Nguyen also spoke about the special friendship between Okamoto and his fellow puppet animator Kihachirō Kawamoto (川本 喜八郎, 1925-2010), with whom he collaborated on the Kawamoto+ Okamoto Puppet Anime-Shows (1972-1980).  Kawamoto is an internationally recognised animation auteur, but as his work is widely available on DVD, Nguyen chose to shine his spotlight on Okamoto for the RICA audience.  He did; however, show a five-minute clip from a recording of a theatrical presentation of a scene from The Romance of the Three Kingdoms (三国志/Sangokushi, 1982-4) which was performed as part of the homage to the great puppet master after his death in 2010. 

All of the Okamoto films Nguyen presented were on 35mm, which was a special treat.  Although the complete box set of Okamoto presents the films in their restored glory, there is something wonderful a about seeing the films in their original format.  The films were not subtitled, so Nguyen did live French interpretation.  The short documentary Making of Are wa dare , is a real treasure because it demonstrates in brief how Echo Productions makes a film from storyboard to character and set design to filming on an impressive multi-plane animation table in order to create depth of space. 

Catherine Munroe Hotes 2014 

Coming Soon:

Japanese Auteur Animation at RICA Wissembourg, Part 4 : Auteurs of the 2^nd and 3rd Generations

Japanese Auteur Animation at RICA Wissembourg, Part I: The Beginnings of Auteurism

Japanese Auteur Animation at RICA Wissembourg

Part I : The Beginnings of Auteurism 

« L'animation japonaise d'auteur » presented by Ilan Nguyen

RICA (Rencontres Internationales du Cinéma d’Animation) is an international animation festival in Wissembourg, France.  It has been held every 2-3 years since 1995 by the local cinema club.  Located in a small Alsatian town nestled on the border with Germany, the festival has a warm atmosphere and spectators both young and old who share a passion for the craft of animation. 

For the 10^th edition of the RICAs, the French animation historian and interpreter Ilan Nguyen was invited to present two screenings of Japanese Auteur Animation accompanied by a talk about the history of independent animation production in Japan from the post-war period until the present day.    

Screening One / Programme 1ère partie                  22 Nov. 2014, La Nef, Wissembourg

An Overview of Japanese Auteur Animation

Un survol de l'animation japonaise d'auteur

Post-War – 1970s / De l'après-guerre aux années 1970

The Beginnings of Auteurism

Prémices à l'auteurisme

Piggyback Ghost /おんぶおばけ (Ryūichi Yokoyama, 1955)

Little Black Sambo /ちびくろさんぼのとらたいじ (Tadahito Mochinaga, 1956)

Plus 50000 Years /プラス50000年 (Ryūichi Yokoyama, Shin’ichi Suzuki, 1961)

50,000 Insects (1 Episode) / 五万匹　(Ryūichi Yokoyama, 1962)

Nguyen began with by introducing the work of Ryūichi Yokoyama (横山 隆一, 1909-2001), a popular satirical cartoonist with a museum, the Yokoyama Memorial Manga Museum, dedicated to his memory.  Although his cartoons, such as the Fuku-chan (1936-71) and Hyaku-baka (1968-70) series are well known, less attention has been paid to Yokoyama’s intrinsic role in the development of Japanese animation.  Nguyen presented a short, silent clip from Yokoyama’s 25-minute ghost tale Piggyback Ghost (おんぶおばけ/Onbu Obake, 1955).  The film title has also been variously translated to English as Knapsack Ghost and Ghost in a Knapsack.  The story is based on a popular folk legend.  From what his research, Nguyen believes that Yokoyama was the first Japanese animator to go to Hollywood to visit the Disney studios and study the animation methods used there.

Piggyback Ghost was believed lost until relatively recently.  The clip that Nguyen showed was of poor quality and in desperate need of restoration.  However, it was pretty clear that the film was an exercise for Yokoyama in trying out the various cel animation techniques he witnessed at Disney.  The scene was a chase scene and Yokoyama plays with using different perspectives to create drama.  One shot that was particularly notable was a chase scene where the protagonist is running straight at the camera.  A bit rough around the edges, but it certainly piqued my interest in seeing the film fully restored.

Another notable pioneer in post-war Japanese animation was the puppet animator Tadahito Mochinaga (持永只仁, 1919-99).  Mochinaga and Yokoyama had a connection because one of Mochinaga’s animated film was an adaptation of Yokoyama’s Fuku-chan cartoon – the 1944 film Fuku-chan’s Submarine (フクちゃんの潜水艦 / Fuku-chan no Sensuikan). 

Mochinaga played a crucial role in the founding of the Shanghai Animation Film Studio in China, and upon his return to Japan would end up producing the puppet animation for America’s much-beloved Rankin/Bass Christmas specials such as Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1964) and The Little Drummer Boy (1968).  Little Black Sambo (ちびくろさんぼのとらたいじ, 1956) was the film that brought Mochinaga to Arthur Rankin, Jr. and Jules Bass’s attention at the Vancouver International Animation Festival in 1958, where it won Best Children’s Film.  As there were many young people in the audience, Nguyen was careful to give the background of the racist history of the story that Little Black Sambo is based upon.  I will write about this more fully in my forthcoming review the film, but in the meantime, you can learn more from my review about Mochinaga’s sequel Little Black Sambo and the Twins (1975).

 

Ilan Nguyen being introduced by Edmond Grandgeorge

Next, Nguyen introduced the animator Shin’ichi Suzuki (鈴木 伸一, b.1933), who worked at Yokoyama’s studios Otogi Pro at the time, before going on to co-found Studio Zero in 1963.  Yokoyama and Suzuki co-directed Plus 50,000 Years (プラス50000年, 1961), a comic animation short which speculates about how humankind will evolve in the next 50,000 years.  He also screened one short episode from Otogi Pro’s series 50,000 Insects (五万匹, 1962).  The episode was comic in nature and told the story of a boar’s encounter with a sika deer.  The mean-spirited boar knocks the deer off a log into a ravine then goes on his merry way until a lump in the shape of the deer appears on his nose.  This forces the boar to reconsider his actions and he returns to the scene of the incident in the hopes of rescuing the deer.  Otogi Pro films and television series are not easy to come by, so this was a particularly special treat. 

Catherine Munroe Hotes 2014

Next:

JapaneseAuteur Animation at RICA Wissembourg, Part 2: The Invention of the AnimationAuteur

The Little Drummer Boy (リトル・ドラマー・ボーイ, 1968)

The Little Drummer Boy (リトル・ドラマー・ボーイ, 1968)

Debut: 19 December 1968 on NBC
Available to purchase as an Instant Video on Amazon:  The Little Drummer Boy

Rankin Bass’s 1968 Christmas Special, The Little Drummer Boy, was inspired by the popular mid-20^th century Christmas carol “The Little Drummer Boy” by Katherine Kennicott Davis, Henry Onorati, and Harry Simeone.  Davis claimed to have based her 1941 song on a Czech carol.  It was initially recorded by the Trapp Family Singers under the title “Carol of the Drum”, and Harry Simeone’s 1958 arrangement of the song for The Harry Simeone Chorale album Sing We Now of Christmas became a big hit in the US.   

Song Lyrics:

Come they told me, pa rum pum pum pum

A new born King to see, pa rum pum pum pum

Our finest gifts we bring, pa rum pum pum pum

To lay before the King, pa rum pum pum pum,

rum pum pum pum, rum pum pum pum,

So to honor Him, pa rum pum pum pum,

When we come.

Little Baby, pa rum pum pum pum

I am a poor boy too, pa rum pum pum pum

I have no gift to bring, pa rum pum pum pum

That's fit to give the King, pa rum pum pum pum,

rum pum pum pum, rum pum pum pum,

Shall I play for you, pa rum pum pum pum,

On my drum?

Mary nodded, pa rum pum pum pum

The ox and lamb kept time, pa rum pum pum pum

I played my drum for Him, pa rum pum pum pum

I played my best for Him, pa rum pum pum pum,

rum pum pum pum, rum pum pum pum,

Then He smiled at me, pa rum pum pum pum

Me and my drum.

The purported Czech origins of the song have never been verified, but the drummer boy story shares many similarities with Anatole France’s adaptation of the medieval legend “Le Jongleur de Notre-Dame” (1892), a religious miracle story of a juggler turned monk who has no gift to offer a statue of the Virgin Mary but his ability to juggle.  The other monks accuse him of blasphemy, but the statue comes to life and blesses the juggling monk.

The perennial nature of the song has led many to believe that the story has its origins in the bible, but it is actually a fictional narrative that imagines what that first Christmas might actually have looked like through the eyes of a young boy.  It seems likely that the spirit of the story was inspired by the biblical story of “The Widow’s Offering” about a poor woman who gives all her meagre wealth in charity:

1. As Jesus looked up, he saw the rich putting their gifts into the temple treasury.
2. He also saw a poor widow put in two very small copper coins.
3. “Truly I tell you,” he said, “this poor widow has put in more than all the others.
4. All these people gave their gifts out of their wealth; but she out of her poverty put in all she had to live on.” Luke 21:1-4 

Romeo Earl Muller, Jr. – credited as Romeo Muller – adapted the song into the teleplay.  Muller had been with Arthur Rankin, Jr. and Jules Bass of Rankin Bass from the very beginning writing their first network specials Return to Oz (1964) and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1964).  Having started off his career writing material for Jack Benny, Muller was adept at injecting comedy into his scripts, and The Little Drummer Boy is no different – Ben Haramed (José Ferrer) and his motley gang of performers bring some screwball levity to an otherwise serious tale. 

The little drummer boy is a misanthrope orphan called Aaron (Ted Eccles), who comes from a family of shepherds.  It seems quite remarkable that a boy so young could have developed such bitterness towards the human race, but he has been scarred by the slaughter of his family by thieves who burned down their home.  He now wanders the desert with his drum – a gift from his parents – with his animal friends Samson, a donkey, Baa Baa, a lamb, and Joshua, a camel.   The animals love Aaron’s playing and dance whenever he performs.

Ben Haramed and his accomplice Ali capture Aaron and force him to travel with them to Jerusalem to perform for the public with their ragtag troupe of acrobats.  Aaron’s act is the only one to please the crowds, but the cheers only enrage Aaron who is reminded of what people like them had done to his family and he shouts his hatred at them, calling them thieves and bandits.  The people chase them out of Jerusalem. 

In the desert, they encounter the three “wise men from the east”, Melchior, Gaspar, and Balthazar, on their way to Bethlehem.   Although the narrator – the incomparable Oscar-winning screen legend Greer Garson (Mrs. Miniver, Pride and Prejudice) – tells us these three are from the “Orient”, they actually represent three very different racial types.  In Western church tradition, Melchior is depicted as a king of Persia, Gaspar as a king of India, and Balthazar as a king of Arabia.  In The Little Drummer Boy, Melchior looks like Henry the 8^th, Gaspar is a tall slender African wearing a turban, and Balthazar looks like a Chinese stereotype.  Paul Frees – a regular Rankin/Bass collaborator – voices all three.  Gaspar does most of the talking and Frees gives him a deep, “Ol’ Man River” kind of voice.  At least he doesn’t go for an “Oriental” accent for Balthazar.  I found the depictions of the wise men odd (Africans and Europeans from the east?), but not offensive – it’s certainly mild compared to other ethnic stereotypes in animation of this era (Mr. Magoo’s houseboy Cholly springs to mind).  The most offensive stereotype in The Little Drummer Boy is the depiction of an Arab (Ben Haramed) as a crook – a stereotype still abundant in US pop culture – but at least he’s being voiced by the suave José Ferrer (Cyrano de Bergerac, Moulin Rouge) who makes Ben Haramed charming.

The magi need a new camel, and Ben Haramed sells Aaron’s camel friend, Joshua, to them.  Aaron refuses his “share” of the gold Ben Haramed gets in his deal and goes off in search of Joshua.  They follow the star to the town of Bethlehem and see the shepherds doing the same.  Aaron finds Joshua among the crowds gathered at the stable, but before he can rescue him Baa Baa, the lamb, gets run over by a speeding Roman chariot.  Distraught, Aaron approaches the stable and is filled with wonder at the sight at the manger.  After King Gaspar presents his gift to the baby Jesus, Aaron asks him to save Baa Baa, but Gaspar tells him he is a mere “mortal king” and suggests that the “king among kings” could help him.  Aaron does not understand how this is possible, and Gaspar explains that he does not need to understand he should only go to him.  “But I have no gift to bring,” explains Aaron, which of course cues the Vienna Boys Choir to begin singing “The Little Drummer Boy.”  Aaron plays his drum for the infant Jesus, and all around nod their heads in encouragement.  This heartfelt gift, “given out of the simple desperation of pure love” is rewarded with his lamb being healed.  The story ends with the voice of Greer Garson proclaiming, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God”

The Little Drummer Boy was restored in 2005 for DVD release, but they did not go overboard with digitally remastering it to look pristine.  The flecks and scratches of the film are still present, but the colours are good and the soundtrack is very clean.   While I do think that animation classics should be preserved and restored, I do not like it when they go too far so I was glad to see that the Rankin Bass films have kept their unique 1960s charm.  There is an odd little moment where Paul Frees reads one line of narration instead of Greer Garson – but only keen listeners would really notice this.  Perhaps she was unavailable to record additional dialogue?  There is no explanation for this in Rick Goldschmidt’s The Enchanted World of Rankin/Bass.

The Japanese staff do not receive any onscreen credit.  While the script and design were all done State-side, the task of making the puppets and doing the Animagic stop motion animation went to Tad Mochinaga’s MOM Productions in Tokyo.  Arthur Rankin normally supervised the Rankin Bass animation projects in Japan, but grunt animation work was done by Takeo Nakamura (中村武雄) and Hiroshi Tabata (田畑博司).  The sets are truly spectacular and the puppets have been beautifully crafted.  The stop motion has been expertly done, with a wide variety of camera distances and angles.  There are nice little touches such as the credits superimposed over the drum and the use of light to denote holiness.  My favourite moment is Baa Baa dancing to Aaron’s drum.  Although I prefer “The Insane Paganism of Rankin and Bass”, the final manger sequence of Aaron playing his drum to the sound of the Vienna Boys Choir is undeniably lovely. 

Songs:

“When the Goose is Hanging High” (José Ferrer)

“Why Can’t the Animals Smile?” (Ted Eccles)

“One Star in the Night” (The Vienna Boys Choir)

“The Little Drummer Boy” (The Vienna Boys Choir)

Produced and Directed by:

Jules Bass

Arthur Rankin Jr.

Animation (uncredited):

Takeo Nakamura (中村武雄)

Hiroshi Tabata (田畑博司)

Teleplay:

Romeo Muller

Production Design:

Charles Frazier

Sound:

Jim Harris

Phil Kaye

Music:

Colin Romoff

Continuity:

Don Duga

Cast:

José Ferrer as Ben Haramed

Paul Frees as Aaron’s Father / the Magi

June Foray as Aaron’s Mother

Ted Eccles as Aaron

Greer Garson as Our Story Teller

The Vienna Boys Choir (Wiener Sängerknaben)

Production Companies:

Rankin/Bass Productions

MOM Productions (uncredited)

Catherine Munroe Hotes 2013

Kawamoto-Norstein @ Forum des Images, Day 3

Kawamoto-Norstein @ Forum des Images, Day 3

Sunday, March 25, 2012

On this day I rose early and went for a stroll around the Eiffel Tower and along the Seine with Sakadachi-kun (see tumblr). I then hopped on the Métro Line 6 and headed to the Cinémathèque Française at Bercy.  There was a long queue to get into the Tim Burton Exposition – the one that first appeared at the MOMA in 2009.  Even though they only allowed so many people in per hour, the exhibition was still overcrowded and hot.  I was surprised at the number of parents who had brought very young children to the exhibition.  I witnessed one young girl’s innocent childhood being blemished with nightmarish imagery as she stared as if transfixed at a figure of an infant with nails in it.  It was worth putting up with the crowds to see Johnny Depp’s Edward Scissorhands (1990) costume, as well as a long row of Jack Skellington heads from The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) in a lit display box.  Each head had a slightly different expression on it to give spectators an idea of the process of stop motion.

The regular museum of the Cinémathèque Française had free admission on this day.  It was smaller than I had expected, knowing what treasures are in the archives of the Cinémathèque Française, but there were indeed many delightful things on display.  Martin Scorcese has already donated some set pieces from Hugo (2011), but I was much more impressed to see the original magician’s coat from Georges Méliès’  A Trip to the Moon (Le Voyage dans la lune, 1920) in full colour and with hand-embroidered shapes on it.    Some of my favourite things on display at the museum:  a self portrait of Asta Nelson  (here it is on flickr, but it not as vibrantly coloured or as textured in postcard form), Mrs. Bates' head donated by Alfred Hitchcock shortly after the release of Psycho (1960), Mae West’s serpent turban from Leo Macarey’s Belle of the Nineties (1934), original poster art from Julien Duvivier’s Pépé le Moko (1937), and Nikolai Cherkasov’s costume from Sergei Eisenstein’s Ivan the Terrible (1944-6).

For fans of animation, there are many wonderful things to discover in the Cinémathèque Française.  On the walls just before one goes upstairs there is original art from Hans Richter’s Rythmus 23 (1923) and Viking Eggeling’s Symphonie Diagonale (1924).  The Cinémathèque also hold the collection of the pinscreen animation pioneers Alexandre Alexeieff and his wife Claire Parker.  On the upper level of the museum there are two pinscreens on display.  A tableau from 1930 – presumably the one used for the groundbreaking film Night on Bald Mountain (Une nuit sur le mont chauve, 1933)  and a larger screen from 1943.  The large screen holds approximately 1,140,000 pins and was restored for the Cinémathèque by NFB pinscreen animator Jacques Drouin.  The smaller tableau had the image of Bébé Nicolas on it – a character invented by Alexeieff to amuse his daughter when she was young.

There was great excitement at the Forum des images on Day 3, for Raoul Servais (official website) had come from Belgium to see his old friend Yuri Norstein.  I was drinking coffee in the Forum’s café when he entered and witnessed the warm embrace between the two men.  Norstein was delighted to see Servais and introduced him to the audience at the screening of Norstein’s early works and collaborations.  It was wonderful seeing Roman Kachanov’s enchanting The Mitten (1967) on 35mm.  Many of the films in this programme did not have subtitles, but this did not bother me because I had seen the ones with dialogue before.  The highlights of this programme were Ivan Ivanov-Vano and Norstein’s The Battle of Kerzhenets (1971) The Seasons (1969) on 35mm in their full widescreen glory.  They were truly a wonder to behold.

In the evening, Ilan Nguyen  and Serge Éric Ségura did a long presentation on the career of Kihachirō Kawamoto.  This included many rare photographs and video clips of Kawamoto and projects that he worked on throughout his career.  Nguyen teaches animation at Tokyo University of the Arts and is a well known animation expert in France.  He very kindly gave me programmes from the Nouvelles Images du Japon festivals that he assisted in organizing at the Forum des images in past years which have included showcase of the works of Osamu Tezuka, Yōji Kuri, Isao Takahata, Hayao Miyazaki, Satoshi Kon, Kōji Yamamura, and many others.  The French premiere of Kawamoto’s Winter Days occurred at the 2003 festival.  According to his profile on the website of the French periodical éclipses (revue de cinéma), Ségura is working on two books: one about the career of Servais and one about Kawamoto. 

The presentation opened with a clip of Kawamoto singing a Russian song on Japanese TV – which thoroughly delighted Norstein.  The main thrust of the presentation was to demonstrate the way in which Kawamoto had to wear many different hats during his life in order to make a living.  It is very difficult for independent animators to make a living on animation alone. 

There were photographs from Kawamoto’s early childhood – many of which were not in the two Japanese books profiling his life such as those of his mother Fuku (1891-1940) and his father Kinzaburō.  Kawamoto was born and raised in Sendagaya – the neighbourhood in which he was to live for the rest of his life.  His family dealt in porcelain.  There was a photograph of Kawamoto’s paternal grandmother Suzu Kawamoto (1861-1937) who was a major influence on the path his life was to take: teaching him how to make dolls and taking him to the theatre with her.

In the chapter I wrote on Kawamoto for Directory of World Cinema: Japan 2 (ed. John Berra, 2012), I mention the fact that Kawamoto was a big fan of Hollywood and European film of  the 1930s – even making dolls of Greta Garbo and Danielle Darrieux.  Nguyen and Ségura presented a pastel that Kawamoto had made of Swedish film star Zarah Leander next to the original photograph that he had used for inspiration as well as dolls he made of Audrey Hepburn and Brigitte Bardot.

For me the highlights of the presentation were photographs I had never seen before such as Kawamoto on the  set of productions at Toho including Senkichi Taniguchi’s Escape at Dawn (1950) and Teinosuke Kinugasa’s Actress (1947).  We saw clips of a Horoniga (character with a beer stein for a head used in advertisements for Asahi Beer in the 1940s and 50s) animated short directed by either Tadasu Iizawa (1909-94) or Tadahito Mochinaga (1919-99), as well as the first few minutes of Mochinaga’s Little Black Sambo (1956) – which I would have loved to have seen in its entirety.

They also had on hand first editions of the Toppan storybooks, which Shiba Pro later published internationally – such as the Golden Press Living Storybooks series.  I have written about my copy of The Little Tin Soldier (1968) – click here.  There were also clips from other animation Kawamoto had done for the NHK such as the opening credit sequence of Okaasan Ishō and Boo Foo Woo (1960-7).  There was a series of Asahi Beer commercials with the slogan “Watashi no biru” (My beer) which were hilarious send-ups of westerns – Kawamoto had apparently been a huge fan of westerns as a teen, particularly John Ford’s Stagecoach (1939). 

There was one bit of information that took me totally by surprise: I leaned that Kawamoto had elaborate tattoos on his back and upper arms.  Today in the west it has become quite commonplace for people to have tattoos, but in Japan such tattoos are associated with the yakuza.  Many sentō (public bath) have signs declaring that people with tattoos are not welcome to bathe there.  Kawamoto had his tattoos done between 1956 and 1963 apparently as a kind of act of rebellion; a way of marking himself as an individual.  Ségura and Nguyen even showed us a photograph of Kawamoto’s tattoos taken from the rear with him only wearing a fundoshi (traditional male underwear).  This was followed by a series of photographs from Kawamoto’s trip to Eastern Europe.  I looked at the famous photograph of Kawamoto with Jiří Trnka (1912-69) with new eyes.  Kawamoto looks very conservative in his suit: a small, unassuming man in contrast to the hulking form of Trnka.  To think that under that smart suit, Kawamoto was hiding an elaborate work of tattoo art!

One of the questions that had been niggling at me for some time was the mystery of Kawamoto’s first feature film: Rennyo and his Mother (1981).  This 93 min. puppet animation never plays at retrospectives of Kawamoto’s career and has never been made available on video or DVD.  They showed a clip from the film and it looks absolutely stunning.   After the presentation, I asked Nguyen about the availability of the film and he said that it also screens rarely in Japan as the rights are held by the religious organization who commissioned it.  The scenario for the film was written by Kaneto Shindō (Kuroneko, Onibaba) and it features voice acting by Kyōko Kishida and Tetsuko Kuroyanagi.  Although it was not a personal project of Kawamoto's, rather a commissioned work to order, I still feel the work is significant and would love to see it some day.

During the overview of the latter half of Kawamoto’s career there were photographs of him at festivals and other events around the world.  Notable photographs included one of him with Yuri Norstein at 1985 animation festival in Varna – which is the occasion on which the two of them became friends, with Jim Henson in 1986, with Břetislav Pojar at Annecy in 1987, in Shangai in 1987 signing the contact to make To Shoot Without Shooting (1988), and with Karel Zeman and Nicole Saloman at Hiroshima in 1987.  The presentation concluded with footage from the Kawamoto memorial service in 2010 which featured a very moving march of the large puppets from his NHK special series Romance of the Three Kingdoms. 

The presentation was followed by Takashi Namiki’s documentary Living With Puppets: The World of Kihachirō Kawamoto (1999) – read my review here.  The weekend concluded with a screening of Kawamoto shorts including a rare screening of Tadahito Mochinaga’s Little Black Sambo and the Twins (1957), for which Kawamoto had crafted puppets.  Read about this film here.  I slipped out of the final screening event after this film, for I had seen all the other films many times before.

 

with the illustrious Alexis Hunot

I had a chance on the final day of the Kawamoto-Norstein event to get to know animation expert Alexis Hunot a bit better.  I am a longtime fan of his blog Zewebanim and was pleased to find that he is also a fan of this blog.  It turns out that the review that I wrote about Takashi Namiki’s book Animated People in Photo, struck a personal chord with Alexis because his uncle Jean-Luc Xiberras (April 1, 1941- December 26, 1998) is featured in the book.  My blog post apparently triggered Alexis to track down a copy of the photograph for his mother.  Xiberras was the director of Annecy from 1982 until his passing in December 1998.  It was under Xiberras’ direction that Annecy moved from being a biennale to an annual event in 1998.  There is an interview with Xiberras from 1997 on AWN as well as a touching homage to him from 1999 in English and French with tributes written by Frédéric Back, Bruno Edera, and many others. 

Alexis Hunot did his studies in cinema, but his love of animation began when he discovered the works of Back, Norstein, and Jan Švankmajer at Annecy 1987 where he worked as an assistant.  He teaches at Gobelins  and has a monthly radio programme with Florentine Grelier about animation with called Bulles de rêves.   You can see a video of him giving a lecture here, and here is the interview he did with Yuri Norstein.

Catherine Munroe Hotes 2012

PREVIOUSLY: Kawamoto-Norstein @Forum des Images, Day 2 (Part II)

FIRST ENTRY IN THIS SERIES: Kawamoto-Norstein @ Forum des Images, Day 1

Little Black Sambo and the Twins (ちびくろのさんぼとふたごのおとうと, 1957)

One of the highlights of the Kawamoto-Norstein event at Forum des Images in Paris was the screening of the rare Tadahito Mochinaga film Little Black Sambo and the Twins (Chibikuro Sanbo to futago no otōto, 1957).  During their lecture on the life and career of Kihachirō Kawamoto, animation experts Ilan Nguyen and Serge Éric Ségura showed the opening few minutes of Little Black Sambo (ちびくろさんぼのとらたいじ, 1956) – the film that puppet animation pioneer Mochinaga showed at the first Vancouver International Film Festival and caught the eye of Arthur Rankin, Jr.  (learn more). 

Little Black Sambo and the Twins was screened in its entirety.  It is the sequel to Little Black Sambo and was screened in its entirety (17 minutes) in a programme of short films by Kihachirō Kawamoto.  Kawamoto did not animate this film, but he did make the puppets for it.

Both Little Black Sambo and Little Black Sambo and the Twins are adaptations of books written and illustrated by Scottish children’s author Helen Bannerman (1862-1946).  The Edinburgh-born author lived for much of her life in India where her husband William worked as an officer in the Indian Medical Service.  The heroes of many of her books are south Indian and Tamil children.  The original books were meant to educate and entertain English speaking children about the indigenous Indian and Tamil cultures.  From today’s perspective Bannerman’s work depicts a colonialist view of these cultures in a similar vein as Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book (1894). 

The Story of Little Black Sambo was immensely popular in the first half of the 20^th century, but unfortunately later US editions of the story replaced Bannerman’s illustrations with racist African stereotypes.  Out of cultural and geographical ignorance, these stories retain the same settings and animals, thus promoting the false notion that tigers, etc. live in Africa.  The most notorious of these is Wizard of Oz illustrator John R. Neill’s 1908 version of Little Black Sambo, which transformed Sambo into an offensive pickaninny character.  This is believed to have contributed to the use of “sambo” as a racist slur.  The poet and social activist Langston Hughes condemned Little Black Sambo in 1935 as a "pickaninny variety" of storybook, "amusing undoubtedly to the white child, but like an unkind word to one who has known too many hurts to enjoy the additional pain of being laughed at." (source)

Frank Dobias’s illustrations of the 1927 Macmillan edition of Little Black Sambo are equally as offensive as those of Neill and they are the ones that the Japanese publisher Iwanami Shoten used when they published a Japanese edition of the controversial book.  As this is the most well known version of the stories in Japan, many mistakenly believe it to be the original illustrations of the story.  Other Japanese publishers also created their own editions of the stories.  The book was discontinued in 1988 because of the racist nature of the illustrations, but was recently reprinted by a small press called Zuiunsha with Dobias’s offensive illustrations (learn more).  The quotes from the president of Zuiunsha in this Guardian article demonstrate the publishing company’s complete ignorance as to why the books are considered racist.

Knowing this background, I was somewhat trepidatious about seeing Mochinaga’s film at Forum des images.  It does indeed depict an African child in a non-African /pseudo-African setting full of animals that don’t quite fit the locale, but I was relieved that it was nowhere near as offensive as Ub Iwerks’s cringe-worthy 1935 adaptation of Little Black Sambo that portrayed the characters in “black face” complete with a Mammy caricature who uses stereotypical language such as “Now run along and play honey child, but watch out for that bad ole tiger.  That ole tiger sho’ do like dark meat!” The Iwerks version promotes terrible ignorance about black people in the name of comedy.  For example, in the opening scene, Mammy washes Sambo and it makes the water turn black.  

Ub Iwerks 1935 film poster and screencap of title card.  

Mochinaga's version of Little Black Sambo and the Twins is not without ethnic stereotyping – Sambo’s mother is a large, round woman who does fit the “Mammy” stereotype.  I am not familiar enough with African landscape and cultures to judge the authenticity of the African characters in the film, but in my estimation the approach taken towards the characters is very different from the Ub Iwerks animated short.  The Iwerks short has clearly exaggerated the black stereotypes in order to get laughs from the audience, whereas the Mochinaga film has gone for the kawaii approach to depicting the black characters.  The ethnicity of the central characters is not exaggerated for the sake of laughs, rather Sambo and his family are depicted in a loving way.  The laughs in the film are either of the pratfall variety or at the funny things that children and animals do that we recognize from our own lives.


The Kawamoto-made puppets also do not resemble the Dobias illustrations familiar to Japanese children.  The African characters do not have exaggerated lips and eyes.  At least, the eyes are not exaggerated in the tradition of the pickaninny caricature.    They are large and doe-like – the kind of Bambi eyes that we today associate with anime.  In contrast to the mother, the father is tall and slender and wears what appears to be a fez – giving him a very North African look.  This suggests that Mochinaga and Kawamoto made an effort to learn about African dress, but did not necessarily stick to one particular African culture.  The characters do have large ears, but no more so than white and Asian characters made by Mochinaga and Kawamoto in the 1950s and 1960s.  Apart from the darker skin tone and the curly hair, the children look very much like dolls and illustrations of Japanese children from the early to middle 20^th century.

The story of Little Black Sambo and the Twins is quite straightforward.  Sambo’s parents have to run an errand and they leave Sambo at home to babysit his twin brothers.  Sambo is a very responsible brother, but when he takes his eyes off the twins for a moment to do a chore, an oversized vulture (at least three times larger than the toddler twins - in fact, it is so big that in the opening credits when it is flying around in the background, I thought it was a dragon) kidnaps the twins and holds them captive at the top of a tall tree.  A pair of friendly monkeys offer to help Sambo find his siblings.  They are aided by a friendly tropical bird (possibly a parrot?) who leads them to the tree where the twins are being held captive.  While the vulture is away checking on his/her own children, Sambo and the monkeys climb the tree to rescue the twins.  The vulture returns before the second twin is safely on the ground and Sambo engages in a fight with the bird.  As Sambo is fighting the vulture, his parents return to find their children missing and follow the noise of the fight to come to their children’s aid.  The story ends with the family happily reunited.  They hold a celebratory feast and thank their animal friends for their assistance.

In the original story by Helen Bannerman, the twins (unfortunately named “Woof” and “Moof”) are kidnapped by evil monkeys and an eagle aids Sambo in rescuing the young boys.  I have never read the Japanese edition of this storybook so I do not know whether or not the changes in the story were written by Mochinaga and his screenwriter Haruo Mura or by the translator of the Japanese edition of the storybook.  Whatever the case, the Mochinaga puppet animation is presenting a common storyline in children’s literature: the family unit is threatened by an outside force, the members of the family join forces to combat this threat, and the story ends with the family intact again.  The anamorphic animals add interest for children, and one can imagine children who view this film re-enacting the dramatic scenes with their own toys at home.

The film is shot in black and white – which was quite common in the 1950s due to the cost of colour film stock.  It is also possible that the film was made with television in mind, and television was in black and white in those early years.  The puppets that Kawamoto made are sweet.  The faces are very expressive and the costuming and sets have been beautifully designed – simple and straightforward so as not to distract from the expression of the character movement.  It is a first rate puppet film for the 1950s – not as complex and elaborate as the works of Jiri Trnka and other Eastern European animators of the time, but certainly very well planned and executed.

Although it is clear that Little Black Sambo and the Twins was meant for preschool aged children, it is not something I would watch with young children not only because of the inaccurate portrayal of African people but also because it could instil in them an irrational fear of large birds of prey.  That being said, it is a shame that this and Mochinaga’s other puppet animation films are not more widely available for they are invaluable to the study of animation history and to the study of the portrayal of ethnic minorities in Japanese culture.

Catherine Munroe Hotes 2012

Credits:

Director: Tadahito Mochinaga (持永只仁) 

Producer: Kiichi Inamura (稲村喜一)

Original Story: Helen Bannerman (ヘレン・バンナーマン)

Screenplay: Haruo Mura (村治夫)

Music: Mitsuo Katō (加藤光男)

Cinematographer: Jirō Kishi (岸次郎)

Art director: Junji Eguchi (江口準次)

Puppets: Kihachirō Kawamoto (川本喜八郎)

Puppet Maker Sumiko Hosaka's Animation Top 20

Sumiko Hosaka  (保坂純子, b. 1930) has worked as a puppet artist since 1953.  Throughout her career she has made puppets for live theatre, TV, and commercials, but is perhaps best known for the puppets she made for the stop motion animation of Tadanari Okamoto.  She has also made puppets for the films of Fumiko Magari and the Noburo Ofuji Award winning team N&G Production.

Tadanari Okamoto Sakuhin Shu Vol.3

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Her first experience making puppets for stop motion animaton came in the early 60s when she was part of the original staff at Tadahito Mochinaga’s MOM Productions.  She was on one of the puppet-making  teams that worked on MOM Pro's first project for Rankin/Bass The New Adventures of Pinocchio (1960-61).  Starting in the late 1960s, she began working for Okamoto, her former colleague at MOM Pro, after he had set up his own independent studio Echo Productions.   She made puppets for many of his most significant stop motion works from The Mochi Mochi Tree (1972) to The Magic Ballad (1982).  She also occasionally worked for Kihachirō Kawamoto – including his greatest work Book of the Dead (2005).

Sumiko Hosaka currently teaches puppet making techniques at Laputa Art Animation School.  Examples of her freelance work can be seen in her profile at Puppet House.

Selected Filmography

The New Adventures of Pinocchio (Rankin Bass, 1960-61)

Back When Grandpa Was a Pirate (Tadanari Okamoto, 1968)

Home My Home (Tadanari Okamoto, 1970)

The Flower and the Mole (Tadanari Okamoto, 1970)

The Monkey and the Crab (Tadanari Okamoto, 1972)

The Mochi Mochi Tree (Tadanari Okamoto, 1972)

Praise Be to Small Ills (Tadanari Okamoto, 1973)

Five Small Stories (Tadanari Okamoto, 1974)

Are wa dare? (Tadanari Okamoto, 1976)

The Magic Ballad (Tadanari Okamoto, 1982)

The Little Bear Oof (Fumiko Magari, 1983)

The Fourth of the Narcissus Month (Suisenzuki no Yokka, Nozomi Nagasaki , N&G Production, 1990)

Home Alone (Rusuban, Nozomi Nagasaki, N&G Production, 1996) – won Noburo Ofuji Award

Book of the Dead (Kihachiro Kawamoto, 2005)

Hosaka’s picks for the Laputa 150 poll in 2003 speak for themselves: a cross-section of some the greatest films in world animation.  Reflecting her interest in puppets, the list is heavy with examples of stop motion animation by Jiri Trnka, Karel Zeman, Roman Kachanov, Jan Svankmajer, and, of course, Okamoto and Kawamoto.  At #1, Hosaka placed the Soyuzmultfilm classic The Little Grey Neck (1948).  In Japan, it was released on DVD together with Ivan Ivanov-Vano’s The Humpbacked Horse (1947/75) as part of The Ghibli Museum Library.  It is also available to buy as a download here.

Konyok-gorbunok & Seraya Sheika

Order from cdjapan

1.   The Little Grey Neck (灰色くびの野鴨, Vladimir Polkovnikov/Leonid Amalrik, USSR, 1948)

2.   The Emperor's Nightingale (支那の皇帝の鴬, Jiri Trnka, Czechoslovakia, 1948)

3.   Prince Bayaya (バヤヤ王子, Jiri Trnka, Czechoslovakia, 1950)

4.   The Hand (手, Jiri Trnka, Czechoslovakia, 1965)

5.   Inspiration (水玉の幻想, Karel Zeman, 1948)

6.   The Fantastic World of Jules Verne (悪魔の発明, Karel Zeman, 1958)

7.   Tale of Tales (話の話, Yuri Norstein, Russia/USSR, 1979)

8.   Hedgehog in the Fog (霧につつまれたハリネズミ, Yuri Norstein, Russia/USSR, 1975)

9.   Cheburashka (チェブラーシカ, Roman Kachanov, Russia/USSR, 1971)

10. Dimensions of Dialogue (対話の可能性, Jan Svankmajer, Czechoslovakia, 1982)

11. Faust (ファウスト, Jan Svankmajer, Czech Republic, 1994)

12. The Fall ( 落下, Aurel Klimt/Derek Shea, Czech Republic, 1999)

13. The Cowboy’s Flute (牧笛, Tei Wei/Qian Jianjun, China, 1963

14. The Demon (鬼, Kihachirō Kawamoto, Japan, 1972)

15. The Magic Ballad (おこんじょうるり, Tadanari Okamoto, Japan, 1982)

16. Creature Comforts (快適な生活, Nick Park, UK, 1989)

17. Nausicaä of the Valley of theWind (風の谷のナウシカ, Hayao Miyazaki, Japan, 1984)

18. The Man Who Planted Trees/L'homme qui plantait des arbres 

      (木を植えた男, Frédéric Back, Canada, 1987)

19. Otesánek (オテサーネ, Jan Svankmajer, Czech Republic, 2001)

20. A Christmas Dream (おもちゃの反乱, Karel and Borivoj Zeman, Czechoslovakia, 1946)